Secondhand Souls (Grim Reaper 2)
“Well, lad, you’ve shat the bed now,” said the banshee.
14
Perchance to Dream
It was a Wednesday night in San Francisco, and despite the fog having laid a soft blanket over the city and the foghorn singing its sad and low lullaby, no one slept well.
RIVERA
Inspector Alphonse Rivera was electrified by the shock and grief of finding Nick Cavuto dead in his bookstore. There were four units and an ambulance on the scene by the time Rivera got there. The EMTs were working on the big man on the floor—compressions on his chest, squeezing the bag to breathe for him, slamming syringes of adrenaline, and hitting him with defibrillator paddles. As soon as they got a heartbeat they would move him, they said.
There was blood, but not a tremendous amount, on Cavuto’s cutaway shirt.
Rivera could still smell the gunpowder in the air, as well as the more smoky aroma of burning peat. Cavuto’s big stainless-steel revolver lay on the floor by him.
“How long?” he asked the first officer he saw with a notebook who wasn’t interviewing someone. Nguyen on his nameplate. Rivera going into autopilot, not allowing what was happening a few feet behind him to become part of his reality.
“They’ve been working about ten minutes—since I’ve been on scene.”
“Gunshot wound?”
“Probably not,” the cop said. He cringed. “EMT said it looks more like a stab wound. Thin blade. Ice pick maybe.”
“Witnesses?”
“People all over on the street, drinkers, diners, people walking their dogs, you know this neighborhood. No one saw shit yet, still looking. ‘Shots fired’ call came from the nail place next door.” The officer looked at his notes. “Seven-oh-two. First unit on scene a minute later. Found him like this.”
Rivera checked his watch: 7:15.
Rivera looked around. The shelf where he had displayed the soul vessels was sprayed with a fine, oily fuzz, like black down, and even as Rivera watched, it was evaporating into vapor. He’d seen it before, a year ago, on the bricks in the alley where he’d pumped nine 9-mm rounds into one of the Morrigan to rescue Charlie Asher.
“We’re moving him!” barked one of the EMTs.
“He’s back?” Rivera asked.
The EMT whipped his head. “No, I’m calling an audible. We can get him to St. Francis in five. He needs a surgeon. Wound may have hit the heart.”
The other EMTs had already lifted Cavuto onto a gurney. Uniform cops were clearing the way to the ambulance.
“We’ll work on him until we can’t,” said the EMT over his shoulder as he went out the door.
“Tell them to check for venom,” Rivera said.
The EMT raised his eyebrows.
“Just do it.”
The EMT nodded and was out the door.
“People next door said they heard six shots, quick,” said Officer Nguyen. “Very, very loud.”
Rivera walked to the display shelf. The books, the five soul vessel books, were still there, lying on the floor, but they no longer glowed. Two rounds had hit the books on the top shelf, tearing cantaloupe-sized holes through the books, leaving shredded paper in the cavity like it had been nested by hamsters. He looked to the back of the store. Two more portals of shredded paper where the rounds had hit the books on the back wall.
Nguyen moved to his side as the last of the black feathers vaporized.
“What the fuck is that stuff? It was all over the place when I got here.”
“No idea,” said Rivera. Then, still on emotional autopilot, crime-scene robot on the scene, he said, “All the shots were Cavuto’s.” He pointed to the four impact points with his pen. He saw Nguyen’s eyes go wide at the craters in the books before him.